LWN style sheets [LWN.net]

LWN style sheets

Posted Jun 25, 2006 8:36 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I think that ayeomans is not complaining about the design, but that it has not changed much recently. I agree that it could use some modern CSS layout; table-based layout is boring. Just do the following simple experiment: visit a LWN page of your choice with Firefox and select "View -> Page style -> No style". Some colors are gone, but it barely changes. Now do the same with Slashdot, The Register, LXer. The result is not pretty.

A face lift keeping the old style is hard to do. The Register did it recently: they changed the layout so it was still The Register but nicer and more readable. I'm sure LWN can do it too!

LWN style sheets

Posted Jun 26, 2006 21:06 UTC (Mon) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link]

Close - not that LWN has not changed, but other sites have. And shown what can be done with the new browsers. I bet LWN would work well in Mosaic still!

The fonts used are rather staid. (I'm not intending to start the font war troll, BTW, but some are nicer and easier to read than Times.) The spacing between paragraphs is quite large, leading to a sparse appearance and a need to scroll. The boxes around comments are rather picky. Colours are hardly used at all, when they could enhance navigation, at least for the well-sighted.

Not that I'd either advocate going as far as other sites. Microsoft.com is a great test for short-sightedness :-) Other blogs also test visual discrimination with grey on light grey typography - a triumph of style over function.